West Antarctic Ice Sheet breaking apart from the inside out

A new study has found the glacier bounding the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is breaking apart from the inside out.

The Pine Island Glacier, one of the glaciers which will probably rapidly retreat, forms an important part of the ice shelf of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Over half of the world's fresh water reservoir is currently frozen in Antarctica. The Pine Island Glacier and the Thwaites Glacier block the ice flow on the continent, keeping about 10% of the Ice Sheet from draining away into the sea.

About 582.7 square kilometers (225 square miles) large iceberg broke off the glacier in 2015. While observing the satellite images of the area in 2013, the scientists noted evidence of a rift forming at the base of the ice shelf, about 32.2 km (20 miles) inland. This rift moved upward over the next two years and broke through the ice surface, setting the iceberg adrift for more than 12 days during July and August 2015.

“It’s generally accepted that it’s no longer a question of whether the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will melt, it’s a question of when, This kind of rifting behavior provides another mechanism for rapid retreat of these glaciers, adding to the probability that we may see significant collapse of West Antarctica in our lifetimes.” said Ian Howat, an associate professor of earth sciences at Ohio State and a leader of the study.

This discovery is the first in the Antarctic, although similar situations have been previously observed in the Greenland Ice Sheet, in regions where the water from the ocean would seep inland and begin melting the ice from below.

Video credit: Seongsu Jeong, The Ohio State University.

According to the scientists, the satellite images present the first solid evidence of how the Antarctic ice reacts to changes occurring at the ocean edge.

“Rifts usually form at the margins of an ice shelf, where the ice is thin and subject to shearing that rips it apart. However, this latest event in the Pine Island Glacier was due to a rift that originated from the center of the ice shelf and propagated out to the margins. This implies that something weakened the center of the ice shelf, with the most likely explanation being a crevasse melted out at the bedrock level by a warming ocean,” said Howat.

The bottom of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is situated below the sea level, so the water from the ocean may intrude far inland without detection. The valleys which can form on the surface can indicate the ice below is in the process of melting.

Due to the lucky circumstances, the Landsat - 8 images were collected while the sun was low and the long shadows cast across have driven the attention to the forming valley. Otherwise, the rift origin in the Pine Island Glacier would have remained undetected.

“The really troubling thing is that there are many of these valleys further up-glacier. If they are actually sites of weakness that are prone to rifting, we could potentially see more accelerated ice loss in Antarctica,” explained Howat.

A rift in Pine Island Glacier ice shelf, West Antarctica, photographed from the air during a NASA Operation IceBridge survey flight on November 4, 2016. Image credit NASA/Nathan Kurtz

According to the researchers, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is quite unstable, and it may collapse over the next 100 years. This would cause the sea level to rise for about 3 m (10 feet), flooding the coastal communities and displacing about 150 million people across the globe.

“We need to understand exactly how these valleys and rifts form, and what they mean for ice shelf stability. We're limited in what information we can get from space, so this will mean targeting air and field campaigns to collect more detailed observations. The U.S. and the U.K. are partnering on a large field science program targeted at that area of Antarctica, so this will provide another piece to the puzzle,” concluded Howat.

Share:

Comments

Virginia Gravlin 3 years ago

Is it possible to get weekly or monthly updates on earthquakes: depth, size and location, (Date) in Antartic Or is the Antartic relatively stable? Location of known volcanoes? Any discovery of fossils in mountains on Antartic? Have rafters from meteorites been discovered and if so, where?

Rudy Haugeneder 3 years ago

So that's it. Like a growing cancer the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is rotting from the inside out. And that's really, really bad news -- for those born today or in recent years. For the rest of us, especially those around age 50 or more, no big deal. The rot won't be complete in our lifetimes. It's not that we don't care about you it's just that nothing can be done about it, whether in the Antarctic or the Arctic. Time for a scotch and cookie.

Whirled Publishing 3 years ago

Pine Island Glacier ripped open in 2015 while Larsen C ripped open in 2016 - both during the winter.

If this isn't alarming enough, we have the 8,000 glacial lakes that also suddenly appeared during the 2016 Antarctic winter.

As glacial melt inundates the sea waters, glaciologists tell us the water temperatures are five to ten degrees above freezing.

If that doesn't prompt you to pause and ponder, perhaps you're allowing the experts-on-parade to do your thinking for you.

Those who have failed to figure out what's going on are in the news, shrugging their shoulders while stuffing their pockets with public funds as the ice streams and glacial lakes melt the ice shelves from the top while drilling downward to the sea -

simultaneously the 5C water temperatures are melting the ice shelves from below.

With 14 weeks of record-breaking heat ahead, the rapid melting and rapid weakening of the ice shelves will continue to escalate.

Our France-sized Ross Ice Shelf - with a couple dozen giant glaciers resting on it - is the most life-threatening of all the ice shelves.

If the experts-on-parade had any intelligence at all, monitors would already be installed on all the seamounts that are beneath and alongside the Ross Ice Shelf.

All the seamounts in Amundsen also need monitors to detect the heat and monitor the explosions.

Underwater video cameras on all those seamounts with online livestreaming for public access is also vital.

However, since the experts-on-parade have chosen to instead drill, drill, drill -

this tells us everything we need to know.

For those who didn't notice, NASA is bragging about logging 300 hours over Antarctica over the past couple months while offering only two minutes of that video footage to the public.

I've been monitoring glacial melt all across the world for nearly 20 years and have tracked it backward in time over 600 years -

I also monitor record-breaking rainfall - which is the result of an exponential increase in evaporation which is the result of an exponential increase in heat coming off the ocean waters which is the result of an exponential increase in heat coming off the seamounts all across the world which is why the Arctic is heating up faster than any place on Earth - because the Arctic Ocean is the most shallow of all the oceans which results in the sea water there warmer up faster than any place else on Earth.

Thousands of links to reports, translated from over a dozen languages, are here:

Latest articles

ESA's Solar Orbiter spacecraft passed through the ion tail of Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) on May 31 and June 1, 2020, and through its dust tail on June 6. This is the 7th space mission to fly through the tail of a comet, and the first one whose upcoming crossing was...

The center of Tropical Storm "Cristobal" will move northward over the central Gulf of Mexico today and tonight (LT), and will be near the northern Gulf of Mexico coast on Sunday, June 7, 2020. Its center is forecast to move inland across Louisiana late...

The unprecedented threat of desert locust to food security and livelihoods continues in the Horn of Africa and it is also very likely to spread to southwest Asia and perhaps West Africa, according to a situation update by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization...

Farmers in Northern Ireland are facing the worst drought since 1976. It came after an unusually dry spell and the sunniest spring ever, with records dating back to 1929. Allan Chambers, a member of the UFU's Seeds and Cereals Committee, said the lack of rainfall...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared a state of emergency in Norilsk, Siberia, on June 4, 2020, following a 20 000 tonne-oil spill in the Arctic Circle. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) described the disaster as the second largest in modern Russian history...

Severe Cyclonic Storm "Nisarga" caused extensive damage and killed four people after it made historic landfall over Maharashtra on June 3, 2020. Meanwhile, the financial capital Mumbai was spared as the storm changed its course. The India Meteorological...

The hypoxic area or "dead zone"-- an area of reduced oxygen level which kills marine life-- in the Gulf of Mexico is forecast to be approximately 10 800 square km (6 700 square miles) larger than the long-term average of about 8 700 square km (5 400 square...

Severe thunderstorms ripped through parts of mid-Atlantic on Wednesday, June 3, 2020, leaving at least three people dead and more than half a million people without power. On Thursday morning, June 4, the National Weather Service (NWS) confirmed the event was a...

A strong earthquake registered by the USGS as M6.4 hit off the coast of Halmahera, Indonesia at 08:49 UTC (17:49 LT) on June 4, 2020. The agency is reporting a depth of 106.9 km (66 miles). EMSC is reporting M6.4 at a depth of 105 km (65 miles). The epicenter was...

Steamboat Geyser in Wyoming is the world's tallest active geyser, which sometimes blasts water over 90 m (300 feet) into the air. At times, the geyser stays quiet for years then abruptly bursts back to life-- a behavior that has been puzzling scientists. A new...

New activity/unrest was reported for 3 volcanoes from May 27 to June 2, 2020. During the same period, ongoing activity was reported for 13 volcanoes. New activity/unrest: Cleveland, Chuginadak Island (USA) | Ijen, Eastern Java (Indonesia) | Karymsky, Eastern...

Autumn 2020 in New South Wales, Australia, was the state's coldest and wettest since 2012, the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) confirmed in a seasonal climate summary issued on June 1, 2020. Daytime temperatures were below to very much below average for NSW, except...

Up to 86 714 lightning strikes were recorded in the entire Washington state, U.S., on Saturday, May 30, 2020-- about 62 percent of the state's yearly lightning average. It occurred during a severe weather event described by the National Weather Service (NWS) as...

A strong earthquake registered by the USGS as M6.8 hit Antofagasta, Chile at 07:35 UTC (03:35 UTC) on June 3, 2020. The agency is reporting a depth of 96 km (59 miles). EMSC is reporting M6.8 at a depth of 87 km (54 miles) The epicenter was located 48.2 km (29.9...

Severe Cyclonic Storm "Nisarga" made historic landfall over Maharashtra, India just south of Alibagh at 07:30 UTC on June 3, 2020, with maximum sustained wind speeds up to 110 km/h (70 mph) and gusts to 120 km/h (75 mph). The landfall process will be...

A devastating hailstorm lashed parts of northern Portugal on Sunday, May 31, 2020, causing more than 20 million dollars' worth of damage to this year's fruit harvest. Areas in the north, including around Viseu and Fundao, Castelo Branco, Belmonte, Covilha,...

"Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently -- they're not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do."